Analysis of the Change of the Pressure Pain Threshold in Chronic Tension-Type Headache and Control

Abstract

Objectives : Although Chronic tension-type headache(CTTH) is one of the most common symptom in primary headache, there is no definite mechanisms. But muscular factors and psychological factors is supposed to be related with CTTH according to many other studies and pressure pain threshold(PPT) is used to measure muscular factors. Methods 1. We performed this study with 63 patients fulfilling the International Headache Societ criteria for chronic tension-type headache and 20 healthy control group and measured the PPT of temporal muscle and trapezius muscle. 2. We investigated the correlation between clinical characteristic and PPT. 3. Each of the CTTH groups and Control group is divided to four group again - HNP, Spondylosis, Sprain, Normal according to Cervical spine X-ray. Results 1. The PPT of temporal muscle and trapezius muscle in the CTTH is significantly lower than that of Control. 2. In CTTH group, the PPT has significant positive relation with duration of headache and continued time of headache. And the PPT has significant inverse relation with Frequency of headache and Level of headache. 3. In CTTH group, spondylosis group has the highest PPT and normal group is second. And there are significant difference between spondylosis group and the others. Conclusion : We found that PPT is strongly significant to measure muscular factor in CTTH.

Keywords

• chronic tension-type headache
• Pressure Pain Threshold
• muscle tenderness